ARINC 600 computers satisfy a standard format for aviation equipment of the same name, created by the company ARINC (for “Aeronautical Radio, INCorporated”). MCU (for “Modular Component Unit”) constitutes a standard width for “rack” equipment, widely used in the aviation industry notably. This width may be from 1 to 12 MCU.
The prior art of the current generation of computers usually consists, for an ARINC 600 module of all dimensions, in containing N boards, and more particularly three or four boards, inserted perpendicularly to a “backplane” printed circuit secured to the connection technology situated on the back face of the computer.
Today, in the case of a 3 MCU computer, such an assembly has a developed surface for accommodating electronic components of approximately 28 square decimeters, or four boards comprising components on each of their faces. That represents power to be dissipated of approximately 45 watts, or 15 watts per MCU in power density and approximately 1.6 watts per square decimeter with an additional limitation of maximum local one-off power of approximately 5 to 7 watts.
Furthermore, certain recent changes in integration capacity and in digital processing power make it possible both to reduce the board surface area necessary for the electronics while continuing to increase the processing capacity thereof. Moreover, these changes make it necessary to dissipate more power, to a factor of 3 to 4 in volume and up to more than 5 to 8 in local one-off power within the future computers and, all the more, cause an increase in the surface power density of the circuit boards and in the power density of the computers of the order of 3 to 4.
In this context, the problem raised by the present patent application lies in optimizing the use of the volume of the computers while taking account of the changes mentioned above.
Therefore, the current computers have, on the one hand, the defect of not making it possible to optimize the available surface area for the electronic components as a function of the volume of the computer. The ratio between the volume of the computer and the volume available for dissipating power within the said computer is not optimized either. Furthermore, they impose limited heights for heat-exchange elements such as radiators, because the boards must slide relative to one another on a parallel plane for them to be inserted or extracted from the computer.
The basic idea of the invention is therefore to make use of the changes made in the electronics field to design more efficient computers, notably thanks to a more judicious layout. The invention therefore seeks to make maximum use of the volumes in three dimensions in order to allow the insertion of radiators of considerable height while maintaining the aspects relating to the independently removable boards.